How to help

May: Corporate-owned Chevron stations throughout California will collect donations for the foundation, as part of the company's pediatric cancer awareness campaign.

May 5: Kid-friendly bands headline a third-annual block party, this time referred to as Cinco de Macky.

July 4: The foundation is slated to run a float in the Huntington Beach Independence Day parade.

August: In honor of one of McKenna's favorite pastimes, the foundation plans on launching a tool kit for kids anywhere to set up lemonade stands and donate money back to the foundation or wherever they choose.

Oct. 11: The second annual MCF Play It Forward Golf Tournament at Tijeras Creek Golf Club.

Facts about DIPG

While pediatric cancer deaths have been halved since 1975, child mortality caused by tumors in the central nervous system have held steady, according to statistics from the National Cancer Institute.

Killing 200-300 children a year, diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG) is the leading cause of brain cancer deaths in kids. Surgery is too dangerous, chemotherapy ineffective and radiation only works temporarily, according to DIPG researchers.

"I think investigations into DIPG lagged because of the lack of ability to analyze the tumors," said Katherine Warren, head of Pediatric Neuro-Oncology for the national Center for Cancer Research, in an email.

New techniques in imaging, labs biopsying tumors outside the U.S. and autopsy collection have changed that, Warren said.

"We now have tissue available to study so more research questions can be addressed and investigators can propose studies for grant funding," she said.

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HUNTINGTON BEACH – McKenna Wetzel, a playful girl who loved selling lemonade on the corner near her Huntington Beach home, was 7 when a tumor was discovered growing deep in her brain.

It's still growing in a laboratory at Stanford – the last living part of a girl who died two summers ago, and the part that killed her.

"You could take that petri dish," said McKenna's mother, Kristine Wetzel, "I could slam it against the wall and I could kill those cells. But we couldn't kill them while they were in her."

Inoperable while McKenna was alive, the tumor is sustained in 2 million-cell batches in California, England, Australia and beyond by researchers who see it as one of the best hopes of finding a cure for the cancer.

Wetzel and her husband, Dave, created the McKenna Claire Foundation, which has raised nearly a half-million dollars to propagate donated tumor cells from their daughter and other children who have died. They hope the research they're funding will save the next set of kids stricken with the cancer that killed McKenna.

"There's so much you can't control with this disease and there's so much, especially at the end, that's devastating and out of your control. You watch your child lose the ability to speak, to move, to see, to hear, to swallow, to breathe," Kristine Wetzel said.

"I wanted my daughter's death to have a purpose."

EARLY ONSET

McKenna Claire Wetzel was diagnosed with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, or DIPG, in January 2011. The rare cancer that weaves through a critical part of the brain is somewhat treatable in adults but considered a death sentence in children.

The family was buoyed by the promise of some DIPG clinical trials, including one with Stanford researcher Dr. Michelle Monje, but none of the leads materialized.

The second-grader kept going to school at Eader Elementary. Classmates would stay inside with McKenna, who was struggling with her balance and needed help simply getting around, a family friend said.

McKenna's friends came to her house every Tuesday night and nearly 1,000 people attended a block party that raised roughly $50,000 meant to help pay for treatment, Wetzel said.

The Wetzels wanted McKenna to have as normal a life as possible, so they told her and her sister, Jordan, that they were trying to make McKenna feel better, not save her from a deadly disease.

"But she knew," Wetzel said. "She only cried one time that I know of. She was up in her room and I asked her, what's wrong? She said, 'You don't want to know, Mommy.' Then she wouldn't talk about it."

McKenna had begun to feel the effects of the tumor again, her mother said, after a couple of good months after radiation.

Ultimately, their "last stand" against the cancer, as Wetzel put it, was to donate McKenna's brain tissue.

Related Links

Dave and Kristine Wetzel, center, hold a photo of their daughter McKenna Wetzel while surrounded by Lisa Roberts, from left clockwise, Ken Roberts, Dawn Sparks, Lisa Norquist, Jeanine Ehret, Brian Lund, Natalie Moser, Rob Norquist and Darin Woinarowicz. The group makes up the McKenna Claire Foundation. ANA VENEGAS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
A family photo of McKenna Wetzel, who died from diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma in 2011 at age 7. COURTESY WETZEL FAMILY
Dave Wetzel makes a point in a meeting of the McKenna Claire Foundation at his home. ANA VENEGAS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Lisa Roberts, right, makes a point during a meeting of the McKenna Claire Foundation as McKenna Wetzel's photo sits on a nearby piano. ANA VENEGAS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
A mouse brain like the ones scientists would implant with DIPG. ASHER KLEIN, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Suspended in this fluid are cells from DIPG-6, which lab tech Anitha Ponnuswami said was created from McKenna Claire Wetzel's donated tissue. ASHER KLEIN, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Anitha Ponnuswami in front of Yujie Tang at Dr. Michelle Monje's lab at Stanford. Ponnuswami tends to the DIPG cells at the lab and ships them out to other labs that request them. ASHER KLEIN, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Dawn Sparks, a member of the McKenna Claire Foundation, makes a point during a recent meeting. ANA VENEGAS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Kristine Wetzel makes a point during a meeting of the McKenna Claire Foundation. ANA VENEGAS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
McKenna Wetzel loved butterfly fairies. Here, a drawing made by McKenna Wetzel includes a note to butterfly fairies. ANA VENEGAS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
The McKenna Claire Foundation meets at the Wetzel family home. ANA VENEGAS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
A mouse brain at Dr. Monje's lab at Stanford, with the pons at the bottom. Scientists implant DIPG cells in mouse brains to create living test subjects. ASHER KLEIN, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Suspended in this fluid are cells from lab manager Anitha Ponnuswami said were replicated from McKenna Claire Wetzel's donated tissue. ASHER KLEIN, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
DIPG cultures at Dr. Monje's lab at Stanford. ASHER KLEIN, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
McKenna Wetzel, left, loved holding lemonade stands. She and a friend pose for a picture in early July 2011 at the last lemonade stand she would hold, about three weeks before she died. COURTESY WETZEL FAMILY

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